


We Go On

by Full_Of_Grace



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Feels, Friendship, Gen, Post canon, Recovery, head canon format, movie verse!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-11-02 09:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20703515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Full_Of_Grace/pseuds/Full_Of_Grace
Summary: "It’s a nice town. Sure thing.(The five of them will never, ever go back.)"An expounding upon the ending of It Chapter 2 or, the author babbles about her post movie verse head canons.





	We Go On

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so to me this doesn't quite seem super fanfic-y, more of like a list of headcanons, but they're so long and prosy I decided to stick it on ao3 lol. Also I'm addicted to sentence fragments so apologies for that.

It’s been three years now and Derry, Maine is a nice town, anybody will tell you that. There’s been a little boom of people moving in, who knows why– getting away from the city, enjoying the suburbs, commuting in to work. It’s a nice town. The people are nice too. There were some… incidents, quite recently actually, but who wants to talk about that. So some madman who once killed his father busted out and killed some kids. Well, he died. (The cops never found out what happened to Henry Bowers, his skull split open, but they weren’t investigating too hard). So that one poor man got thrown off a bridge. The town had a nice little candlelight vigil. It made the local news, and those boys all went to juvie. Nobody talks about these things anymore. Sometimes it’s as if they’ve forgotten entirely. It’s a nice town. Sure thing.

(The five of them will never, ever go back.)

Bill’s new book is coming out, finally, and the preorder numbers are higher than they’ve ever been. The New York Times gave the ARC the best review they’ve ever bestowed upon him. Something about “fundamental humanity in the face of terror”. Something about “the agonies and joys of growing up and facing your childhood”. They still think the ending is shit. That’s alright. Can’t win ‘em all. Anyways, he doesn’t love the ending either. 

He and Audra got divorced– a month after the movie project he’d split from came out. The critics loved the movie. (Loved the ending especially, though it’s not his ending, it’s the work of some guy they yanked out of nowhere to ‘fix things up’). Everybody said the director’s an auteur, Audra’s a genius, that if the academy didn’t hate horror it’d get nominations for sure. All the buzz drove him crazy while he meddled around in his office. He screamed once too often. She left him. It’s probably a good thing– he didn’t know how to cut the chain. Three years later and she’s doing prestige stuff now, she’s engaged to that pretty boy actor boyfriend of hers. He’s happy for her. He really is.

He’s left California for Oregon. It’s cool, northern, but with a touch of that west coast freshness. Everything back east is so old. He doesn’t date, he’s taking time to “work on Bill” as he tells any interviewer who asks. One day he might try again– find some nice woman. A blonde or a brunette. Somebody who doesn’t remind him of anybody. 

Richie’s still in LA, and he’s started dating, really dating, for the first time in his life. There were some half hearted attempts at having girlfriends in college, and a few hookups with men here and there, but he’s never done the whole romance thing. He feels awful pathetic, dating for the first time in his life at over forty, but it’s alright. The men he’s gone out with have been very understanding. This latest one’s real nice– a clever, tidy sort of guy, doesn’t care for stand up and had never heard of him before a mutual friend introduced them. They’ve been going for a month maybe. He doesn’t think the guy’ll last, but he’s hopeful someday someone will. 

He took a long break, after Derry. An unexpected and abrupt hiatus. There were a few months where he wanted to die, a few months after that where he went to a lot of parties and snorted a lot of coke. That ended, and he started visiting this therapist– some beaky little woman his manager recommended. He still wanted to die a little bit, but he decided it was probably better to live. The tour after that crisis was the “Come Out Comeback Tour”– he wrote some of his own jokes for the first time in a long time. He told funny stories from when he was a kid. It was strange, he reflected, that he had funny stories to tell. Rooting around through his memory was like running his tongue along a line of rotten teeth. It ached, almost unbearably. But there were pleasant moments, and he was glad he hadn’t forgotten them.

_“I guess my first real crush was this kid in middle school– he’d been one of my best friends forever, but about seventh grade I started having all of these feelings– and I decided to do something nice for him, something discreet– I was going to give him a popsicle. Like a literal popsicle, you perverts! C’mon! Anyways, at lunch one day I bought a bomb pop, I went to our lunch table and… I chickened out. I stuck the popsicle in my pants pocket, because I was 12 and a fucking idiot, and I went on my merry way. It was only after my next class was over that I realized the popsicle had melted through my jeans. It looked like I pissed my pants. But I pissed my pants for love, and how many seventh graders can say that?”_

The divorce was a mess– Bev had expected it to be, but it still made her panicky. She didn’t so much as want to see Tom again, much less have a legal battle. For months, she’d wake up crying, miserable dreams dripping out of her mind like water. She won, in court, testified and showed pictures of bruises and witness reports and described how it was all her work, and wound up getting a restraining order against Tom and full ownership over Rogan and Marsh fashion– now just Beverly Marsh fashion. She thinks about changing the name to something modern, anonymous– but she doesn’t. It’s nice to know she has something hers. That she can be just her, and be alright. “You’ll be nothing without me––” well haha, she is something. She’s Beverly fucking Marsh, and that’s something. 

It’s nice to be loved, though. Divorce is as sweet as a summer's day, and remarriage is as sweet as honey. She and Ben got married less than a week after it’s all finalized with Tom, in a courthouse, in their everyday clothes, a couple of her friends as witnesses. They bought rings on the way home, simple little bands. They split their time between Chicago and Nebraska– Ben’s used to working remotely, and she doesn’t mind it. He’s started talking about maybe building them a house of their own– she says maybe New Mexico? It’s so warm and dry and safe in New Mexico– and all the artists love Santa Fe.

So maybe they’ll move to New Mexico, or maybe they’ll stay here. It doesn’t really matter where they go. They’ll be together. It feels so good to be loved like a person. It feels so good to know she’s a person. She still has bad dreams, but she has nice ones too. Lovely ones– a boat on the ocean with the sky clear and blue. A litter of puppies she can snuggle with. Her husband kissing her. A group of children, laughing children, playing little kid games. There’s seven of them, the children, all splashing each other in a lake, like they’ve never suffered and they never will. She wants to have children, though she’s getting older now. She wants two or three of them. She likes to think she’d be a good mother.

Ben thinks she’d be a good one too. He adds plans for children’s bedrooms to his favorite piece of mental drawing paper– a building titled “the dream home”. He’s been working on it for a decade– the dream home had a double bedroom before he had anybody to share it with. He was so used to loneliness it took him a while to get used to another person’s rhythms– how she’ll get into bed and just then remember to brush her teeth, hopping back out again, how she sings in the shower and refuses to acknowledge it. 

He’d once thought he’d be lonely forever. Now, at 43, he’s trying once more to make friends. He goes to dinner parties and makes meaningful conversation, he takes up fishing with a man from work. You might never love your friends as brilliantly, as totally as you do at 11, but there's a comfort in the easy, mild talks about the weather, about work. He lets himself eat ice cream, now and then, and a social life means less time for working out. Nobody really notices– Bev says he’s still hot. But of course she’d say that, she loves him– And oh, it rushes over him sometimes, she loves him, she loves him, she loves him.

He used to write poems, but he hasn’t since college. He feels like he’s getting rusty with words somehow, and he’s always been better with his hands. He’s fixing to unveil this stunner of a municipal building in Chicago– it’s maybe the best thing he’s ever designed. He takes Beverly on a private tour a few days before the ribbon cutting– there’s some last minute things being put together, furniture and lighting, but she still tears up when she looks around. “It’s so lovely,” she says, “this is the most wonderful–” and cuts off, moved. He thinks, looking at the light caught in her hair ‘I’ll build you something even better, darling. I’ll build you a future.’

Mike headed down to Florida, like he used to dream about. On the way there he made a stop in Atlanta to see Patty Uris. She was very polite, pleased to meet one of her dead husband’s old friends– hungry for stories of a childhood he never spoke of. The mirrors were still covered, and she tangled her hands in and out of knots. Mike still felt guilty. He’s been trying to not feel guilty. He told her anecdotes about Stan as a child– he didn’t know him as long as some of the others, but he knew him enough. He knew him when it was important. “Your husband was a brave man.” He told Patty, who closed her eyes. “He was, he really was.” 

He contemplated, for a moment, staying in Atlanta– befriending Patty, telling more stories. But he’s a little sick of playing historian, of being a keeper of ghosts. He heads down to Florida. He gets a job in a small town library, makes acquaintances, meets a woman. If he wants, he can go anywhere in the world. The freedom shocks him, the lightness. Anywhere in the world– Rome, Tokyo, Sydney, Helsinki, Cairo. Places where it never rains, places where it rains all the time. He keeps a framed photo of his parents on the counter– his parents as he never knew them– young and just married and laughing to each other. He likes to think they’d be proud of him for leaving. For having the world at his feet.

He has two dogs and a cat, eats vegan, takes up biking. The children at the library call him ‘Mr Mike’ and climb over his arms like a jungle gym. Eventually, his neighbors start calling him Mr Mike too, which is funny. Most people don’t look at him like an intruder, and when they do it’s easier to shake off their stares. His hair starts greying at the temples and he relishes it. He’s made it this far. He hopes to keep making it. 

It’s almost always Mike who send the emails, a tradition at this point– “Hey everybody!! Want to meet up? Where, this time? Kansas? Colorado?” And the others will reply– yes-yes-of course-yes-let’s go to Denver-lets get Greek food-I know this really great spot-how about Mexican-July-maybe August?– And he amalgamates their suggestions into plans, sends off the group message, mark his calendar. He sits back and smiles, types out “I can’t wait to see you all again”. Presses send. 

So it’s been three years now. And here they are, in a Mexican restaurant in Denver (they never get Chinese). They’re chattering about their lives, the five of them– Mike’s girlfriend, Richie’s boyfriend, Bev and Ben’s fertility treatments. Bill’s a little quiet. They look at him. He pulls the new book out of his bag– four copies. They coo dutifully over the cover, flip through the pages. Get to the dedication. Stop. _To six that made my lucky seven– Stan, Eddie, Richie, Beverly, Ben, Mike. All my love. The loser’s club rides forever._

“The ending’s still awful.” Bill says, to stop their tears with laughter. They shake their heads and say they’re sure they’ll love it. He thinks they probably won’t– even he thinks the ending isn’t great. He’s bad with endings, he’ll admit that now. 

The friends in the book, they all go off. They kill the bad guy, get their tidy endings, resolve their trauma, end up with their sweethearts or happily alone. He wrote it, and yet it still rings half hollow to him. No one can walk off the page to happily ever after. They’ll still have nightmares. They’ll ruin relationships, try to pick up the pieces. Things are always going to be difficult. But they’ll keep going. And that’s the other thing he’s always hated about endings– the finality, the never-see-you-again. That’s the worst thing of all. He’s lucky, he thinks as he looks at his laughing friends, his best friends, the loves of his life, he’s lucky that life isn’t a story. That it goes on. That they’ll keep going on.

_The loser’s club rides forever._


End file.
